Publications by authors named "Brandy McGinnis"
Background And Introduction: Obtaining patient medication histories during emergency department (ED) admissions is an important step towards identifying potential errors that could otherwise remain in the patient's active medication list. This is a descriptive report of a standardized, electronic data collection tool created to document potential medication errors in patients receiving high-risk medications during ED admissions.
Materials And Methods: Trained pharmacy technicians completed a survey following medication history collection using a secure web platform called REDCap®.
Background To overcome resource limitations, Ascension hospitals have implemented a virtual pharmacy technician program to facilitate the completion of medication histories in select emergency departments. Objective This multicenter retrospective study aimed to assess the impact of taking a medication history virtually by pharmacy technicians on medication reconciliation accuracy in comparison to other clinicians. Setting Ascension Seton hospitals in Austin, Texas, United States.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: To determine if telepharmacy can be used to collect medication histories on patients admitted in the emergency department (ED) in a large health system.
Practice Description: As part of an effort to address safety concerns, resource limitations, and a decline in medication history completions, a program was developed to use telepharmacy to conduct medication histories on patients admitted in the ED.
Setting: The medication history program covers 5 large facilities.
Background: medication adherence is one determining factor of treatment success. Poor medication adherence mitigates optimum clinical benefits and increases total health care costs. Current evidence suggests that for population-based adherence interventions to be effective, a multidisciplinary, multifactorial approach that can be tailored for each individual should be adopted.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFStudy Objectives: To determine the proportion of patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) and uncontrolled blood pressure who attained a blood pressure of less than 130/80 mm Hg, and to compare patient- and health system- specific characteristics and identify factors independently associated with attaining this blood pressure level.
Design: Retrospective, longitudinal, cohort study.
Setting: Health maintenance organization.
Background: Information comparing characteristics of patients who do and do not pick up their prescriptions is sparse, in part because adherence measured using pharmacy claims databases does not include information on patients who never pick up their first prescription, that is, patients with primary non-adherence. Electronic health record medication order entry enhances the potential to identify patients with primary non-adherence, and in organizations with medication order entry and pharmacy information systems, orders can be linked to dispensings to identify primarily non-adherent patients.
Objective: This study aims to use database information from an integrated system to compare patient, prescriber, and payment characteristics of patients with primary non-adherence and patients with ongoing dispensings of newly initiated medications for hypertension, diabetes, and/or hyperlipidemia.
Background: Authors evaluating the safety and efficacy of ezetimibe have demonstrated a low occurrence of serious adverse reactions, such as elevations in alanine transaminase (ALT) and/or creatine kinase (CK). This study describes the incidence of ALT and CK elevations among those patients who were prescribed ezetimibe in a large ambulatory care population to further elucidate the safety of ezetimibe in a diverse "real-world" population.
Methods: Adults (≥18 years) with at least one prescription for ezetimibe between January 1, 2002, and December 31, 2007, were eligible.
Objectives: To determine statin adherence rates in patients enrolled in a cardiovascular secondary disease prevention program and to evaluate the impact of adherence on subsequent clinical events.
Methods: Patients who had an incident cardiac event between January 1, 2000, and December 31, 2005, and began statin therapy within 90 days of that event were identified and followed until death, a recurrent nonfatal cardiac event, or December 31, 2006. Analysis was conducted in 2007 and 2008.
Background: Retrospective database analyses have revealed that 50% of patients receiving statins discontinue therapy after one year of treatment. Typically, these data do not focus on patient-specific reasons for discontinuation.
Objective: To examine the reasons that patients discontinue statins and compare the patient and clinical factors of those who do and do not discontinue therapy.